Atmospherex Creates Digital Music on 3-D DVDs
This summer, while the major record labels fumble around with new pay services designed to convert ex-Napster disciples into their newest revenue sources, a far more creative idea is taking shape in Park Slope. Computer graphics artist Philip Benn has founded what he refers to as a "new media record label" called Atmospherex. Instead of merely producing digital music, Atmospherex creates DVDs with continuous dance mixes enhanced by three-dimensional computer-animated graphics synched to the music. Benn argues that to entice people to pay for music in the post-Napster period, you have to give them something of value in addition to the music that will always be available free online through decentralized servers like Gnutella.
Atmospherex put out its first release last January, and Benn says he expects to release the second DVD sometime in the fall. The first DVD, Exotic Robotics: Pleasure 141x, contains just under an hour of psychedelic computer graphics pulsating, dancing and squiggling to a mix of trance songs from artists like Rabbit in the Moon, James Holden and Timo Maas. Its effect is less than earth-shattering. Many of the visuals are similar to the desktop MP3 player plug-ins that make kaleidoscopic patterns spiral and spin across your screen in sync with the music. Still, the addition of 3-D graphics, and the complex programming possibilities made possible by the DVD format, make a difference.
Visual artists Bionic Dots are responsible for two of the more striking productions. For James Holden's "First Light," they've taken bundles of dandelion-like flowers and morphed them into acid-induced space creatures with thin, spindly tentacles that squirm and writhe to the ethereal trance music. For an Oliver Lieb song, they used a motion capture suit to create a virtual robot that dances to the beat while twirling flaming glow sticks.
Atmospherex is following in the footsteps of interactive music-video software company Oozic.com. Last year (while still operating under the company name Lava.com), Oozic worked a deal with the electronic dance label Moonshine to bundle the LAVA! Player with enhanced CDs, so consumers could view and create their own simple, 3-D graphics synched to the music. But while the Moonshine releases were designed for use on a PC, Atmospherex releases are DVD, so they're seamlessly integrated into the standard home theater setup. It's also plausible that bar and club owners could play them on nights when there's no live entertainment.
"There's really no limit as to what can be done with DVD as a delivery mechanism for audio and visual," Benn says. "Most important is you can use full-motion video with twice the resolution of VHS and audio quality beyond that of a CD."
Most of the six visual artists who contributed to the first DVD are professional VJs who perform at clubs and rave party massives. By using portable digital tapes, a laptop, a projector and an audio input that allows the music to trigger effects, the VJ can accompany a live DJ and add a whole new element to dancefloor escapism.
"Say you have four projectors completely surrounding the crowd. You can create a virtual environment that the VJ can manipulate. The crowd can interact, too?you can put motion capture on a dancer," Benn says.
Benn, 34, started working with computer graphics when he moved to New York in 1996. He first got a job making commercials with R/Greenberg Associates, and has since become a freelancer and added MTV Networks, Curious Pictures and the Sci Fi Channel to his resume. Most recently, he helped create that AT&T commercial in which a pile of blue and white Legos self-constructs into various animated objects, including a lion, a train and an octopus.
But music has played an equally large role in his life. He was in guitar bands until 1989, when he took an electronic music course at Virginia Commonwealth University. Since then he's had a studio in his home for making electronic tracks, and a few years ago he decided that the DVD format was the key to melding his two interests.
Atmospherex hasn't changed the industry just yet, but it is already adding features to its pending second release, tentatively titled Exotic Robotics: Recreate. Benn says it will implement five-channel surround-sound and user-selectable multi-angle views, which will lend an element of interactivity to the process.
"We're also trying to license songs from bigger labels for the next one, so we can have some of the better-known songs, and eventually we'd like to work out agreements with DJs and producers to license exclusive remixes," he says.
Benn has reason to believe the second release will sell more than the 2000 units of the first one Atmospherex self-distributed since January. The label signed territorial licensing agreements with companies as large as JVC/Victor and Palm Pictures to help market and distribute the second release. So in Japan, for instance, the title will be marketed and sold as a JVC product.
"We make a lot more money doing it ourselves, but this should get it out to a lot more people," Benn says. "Our target is to sell 5000 of the next one in the first year."
Benn also believes his company will benefit from what he sees as an imminent explosion of public interest in computer graphics. Affordable, user-friendly programs like Final Cut Pro have in the past couple years made the inexpensive home creation of digital graphics and DVDs a reality. Just as audio software programs like Cubase and Acid Pro opened the door a few years earlier for swarms of bedroom techno producers, Benn believes, we will soon be inundated with productions from bedroom filmmakers and computer graphics artists.
"We're just at the beginning of it now," Benn says. "People haven't quite made the connection. But I predict that in the next year we'll see growth of about 300 to 400 percent."
Benn hopes to facilitate the growing enthusiasm with the Atmospherex website and eventually create a file-sharing forum. Currently, bandwidth stands in the way of video swapping at the Napster level, but MP4 has the ability to change all that. It is supposed to involve a compressed video layer that could create a whole new set of headaches for entertainment industry copyright holders.
"Before, it was all done within the studio system in Hollywood," Benn says. "So every year or so we get something like The Matrix made by massive teams of people. But suddenly, it's becoming possible for a visual artist to work alone and work at a level that's acceptable to the public for viewing."